Latin Language

LATIN LANGUAGE. To write the history of a lan guage is to trace the changes which it underwent in form with special reference to time and place, from its earliest records, and indeed before, to its latest. For a spoken language is constantly in a state of change, never fixed ; it is dynamic, not static. Strictly speaking, languages do not "live" or "die" or have "family" relationships ; such terms are purely metaphorical. Thus the Romance languages (q.v.), said to be "descended" from Latin, really represent Latin in its changed form in various localities at various dates down to the present. In the same way, Latin itself is a changed form, a developed dialect, of an earlier tongue, a so-called "parent" language, which is commonly known as Indo-European (q.v.), since most of its members in the Old World are located mainly either in India or Europe. If Latin is said to be "related" to these other members, all that is meant by the phrase is that it possesses in common with them, not by borrowing but by "inheritance" (i.e., by direct derivation from I.E.), a fund of words (its vocabulary), certain types of word formation and inflexion (morphology), and certain modes of ex pression (syntax). The I.E. tongue itself must by no means be thought of as primitive or original. Even in its pre-ethnic state (i.e., before cleavage into dialects, and before the distribution of these dialects from a common centre), it was a highly de veloped speech, with an age-long evolution behind it.

Naturally and inevitably Latin had diverged considerably from this pre-ethnic tongue by the time (c. 600 B.c.) from which the oldest extant records of it, inscriptions, date. Destined to survive over I,000 years more as a distinct though constantly changing language, but itself split, as I.E. had been, into sepa rate dialects long before the close of its career, it had acquired, by the end of the 1st century B.c., a norm which, by standards not really arbitrary, is judged classical, and which, in prose style especially, but also in verse, at once reflects and is reflected by that grave, restrained, stately and impressive character of the Roman people who first spoke it, and whose empire made it a world language.

Pre-history.

For, to begin with, Latin was not even the language of Italy but only of the Latins or people of Latium, that is of the Romans themselves and of their immediate neigh bours. Precisely whence, at what date, and by what route this tongue was brought to the banks of the Tiber we do not know; from somewhere in Europe, across the Alps and Apennines, we may conjecture, and certainly before the Etruscan invasion of Italy by sea in the 8th century B.C. More exact definition cannot be given. Spoken contemporaneously with it, in Italy, say about the 5th century B.C., were other more or less closely related I.E. languages and dialects, from the very Latin-like Sicel, known now only from Sicily, to Ligurian, linguistically as well as geograph ically intermediate between Italic and Keltic, in the north-west ; an Illyrian group of dialects (Messapic, Venetic, Raetic, and per haps the so-called old Sabellic, q.v.) on the Adriatic coast ; and

finally, the Italic dialects proper—Oscan (q.v.), Umbrian and the minor dialects. There were also the less nearly related, but still I.E. Keltic, brought in by the invading Gauls, and Greek of Magna Graecia. Lastly there was Etruscan (q.v.) spoken north of the Tiber, and for a time in Campania. This last was not I.E.; but until the coming of Hannibal's Carthaginian troops, Etruscan is the only non-I.E. tongue of which there is any record in ancient Italy. Outside Italy, the Italic group of dialects (includ ing Latin itself, and its closest congeners like Faliscan) is most nearly linked to Keltic, and next to Greek and Germanic, but the historical implications of their similarities are clear only in the case of Keltic (q.v.) and Italic (q.v.). In this case, striking phenomena, among them the subdivision of Keltic into two main branches, Goedelic and Brythonic, strictly parallel to the subdi vision of Italic into Latin-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian, make it certain that the linguistic ancestors of the Keltic and Italic speaking peoples must have lived for a long period in close com munity. Inside Italy itself, Latin was early subjected to con siderable influence from the non-I.E. Etruscan, and from its nearest Italic neighbour, Sabine. Greek influence only became important later, and Keltic influence was never great, being limited to a few elements borrowed by the Latin vocabulary ; e.g., petorritum, "f our wheeler"; gaesurn, "spear." Not only in dividual names like Casca, Sulla, but characteristic features of the Roman name system, and formative suffixes used in name formation, have been ascribed to Etruscan sources, and with them a number of borrowed words (e.g., histrio, "actor"; persona, "mask"; and even the stem of the verb am-are, "love") ; the sub stitution of breathed for voiced sounds, e.g., in sporta (Gr. arvpiba, acc. sg., "basket"), catamitus (Gr. I' avv,u16ns, "Gany mede"), and other words; the aspiration in names like Gracchus, Cethegus (and perhaps in the chommoda for commoda of Arrius in Catullus) ; loss or weakening of syllables as in Latin Pollux (from Gr. IIoXv6thicris) consequent upon a shift of accent to the initial syllable of the word; that mode of accentuation itself ; and the names of the three old tribes said to have constituted the early Roman people—Ramnes, Tities, Luceres—even the very name of Rome, Roma, where the existence of an Etruscan quarter, vicus Tuscus, is well known. Finally, reason has been shown for rejecting the older view, which derived the Latin alphabet directly from the Greek, in favour of an origin at least partly Etruscan.